Community Is Our HeartbeatSample

Staying Connected

If you had a friend who was the groom at a wedding you were invited to, there’s no way you would go up to him and start criticising his new wife at the reception. You just wouldn’t do it, even if you’d had a few. And yet for some crazy reason we can start behaving like God doesn’t mind people criticising the Church, or being critical of other believers. When we stop to think about it, a judgmental spirit is not something God can ever bless. When we criticise or withdraw from the people of God, it’s inevitable that we’ll offend the Groom.

In Ephesians 5, Paul makes it abundantly clear that our relationship with Jesus should be viewed through this lens. Yes he’s setting some guidelines for doing marriage well, but the underlying assumption is that our experience of human marriage is just a shadow of the real thing. The intimacy and belonging that we discover in a healthy marriage is a glimpse of the incredible beauty and safety of our relationship with Jesus. The implication is that we need to catch something of what Jesus sees when he looks at his people. We need to see more of what Jesus sees and love more of what Jesus loves.

Being Provocative - In A Good Way

However, in the book of Hebrews we see a really interesting analogy for how healthy church communities should be relating. The writer explains that we should be ‘spurring’ one another on (NIV). That’s a bit of an intense idea. The word literally means to provoke another person, even to the point of wounding them. Our job is to help get each other moving in the right direction even if it’s a bit uncomfortable. We should be prepared to give each other a good kick up the pants around two things - we’re told to provoke one another to love (the opposite of selfishness) and good deeds (the opposite of self-centredness).

Before all of us who are high on the disagreeability spectrum get too excited, we do need to think about what this looks like in practice though. Think about the kinds of people who you would be happy to receive criticism from. What kind of relationship do you have with them? What makes it safe to have that level of honest input into each other's lives? As we saw yesterday, sharing a few home truths, but doing it without love, is futile and ineffective. None of us benefit from constructive criticism that isn’t delivered in the context of a gentle and caring relationship. It’s a balance that we all need to work on.

But of course, we can’t build relationships of that quality without belonging to a community in a committed way. That’s why the writer of Hebrews adds the next thought. “Don’t give up meeting together.” There would be no need to write that unless it was a fundamental temptation for every human being. Almost 2000 years ago the Christians needed to be warned about the danger of only meeting with other believers when it was easy or comfortable. Nothing much has changed. We’re all vulnerable to the same tendency - to slip into becoming selective in which gatherings we choose to attend, to fall into the habit of participating in community when we feel like we’re getting something out of it, but neglecting community the rest of the time.

The underlying principle is important - growing in faith means growing more in love with what God loves. And that means learning to love the wide and varied characters that make up the Church of Jesus Christ. When God plants us in community we need to cultivate a soft-hearted generosity towards others. Choosing to focus on the gifts and strengths of others, rather than fixating on their weaknesses and immaturities. Jesus loves the Church, and he sees the issues better than we do. The Church is God’s tool to poke us out of our self absorption, and we need that as much as all the people God puts us in community with.

1. When I look at my church community and the wider Church, how much do I see the beauty that Jesus sees?
2. Am I the kind of person who others would like to have ‘spurring them on’?
3. If I had to rate my level of commitment at the moment, what score would I give myself?